TOKYO — Is it the Persian Gulf or the Arabian Gulf? Mount McKinley or Denali? Mumbai or Bombay?
Some geographic names don’t just tell us where we live or where we’re going. They’re also a political statement, or in the eyes of some, a politically incorrect one. They may not spark a war of the worlds, but they can cause a war of words.
China struck back last week after Japan slapped monikers on 158 previously unnamed islands off its shores. Five of them are part of a cluster that both nations claim and is itself the subject of a name dispute: Is it the Senkaku or the Diaoyu islands?
“No unilateral action undertaken by Japan can change the fact that Diaoyu and its surrounding islands belong to China,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang said, using his country’s name for the remote tropical islands in the East China Sea.